(Please note that unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from our standard text, as cited in the introduction.)
The use of torture stands at the apex of a series of arguments into the power of the state and its executive. Soon, I believe we will be considering impeachment items against President Bush and other administration figures. The material in this class constitutes essential background reading for this pending struggle.
The CIA (codenamed Kubark in its interrogation manual) notes at the beginning of its discussion, and we might as well, too, that discussing the use of coercion is not the same as authorizing it. The CIA instructs all readers of its document that:
For both ethical and pragmatic reasons no interrogator may take upon himself the unilateral responsibility for using coercive methods.
In practice, the interrogator gets permission to use such methods from his or her superior up the chain of command. Often, this is the Director of Operations him or herself. The latter may seek permission from the appropriate directors of the executive branch (see recent articles implicating President Bush in such decisions).
The Theory of Coercion
The CIA has thought long and hard on the subject of coercion. It's scientific approach is both chilling and fascinating. It places this kind of research firmly in the mainstream of modern biological, psychological, and sociological inquiry.
Coercive procedures are designed not only to exploit the resistant source's internal conflicts and induce him to wrestle with himself but also to bring a superior outside force to bear upon the subject's resistance. Non-coercive methods are not likely to succeed if their selection and use is not predicated upon an accurate psychological assessment of the source.
In contrast, the same coercive method may succeed against persons who are very unlike each other. The changes of success rise steeply, nevertheless, if the coercive technique is matched to the source's personality.
The CIA spends a lot of time in its document on the question of personality differentiation, but we won't linger there. If there are questions after class, perhaps I can take it up then. Meanwhile, let's look into the heart of interrogatory darkness:
All coercive techniques are designed to induce regression. As Hinkle notes in "The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject as it Affects Brain Function"(7), the result of external pressures of sufficient intensity is the loss of those defenses most recently acquired by civilized man: "... the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to meet new, challenging, and complex situations, to deal with trying interpersonal relations, and to cope with repeated frustrations. Relatively small degrees of homeostatic derangement, fatigue, pain, sleep loss, or anxiety may impair these functions." As a result, "most people who are exposed to coercive procedures will talk and usually reveal some information that they might not have revealed otherwise."
Please note, despite the more dramatic manifestations of torture, such as beatings, electric shock, and waterboarding, psychological torture works on a very precise mechanism of inducing regression, i.e., fucking with people's heads and nervous systems.
Problems of Coercive Interrogation
Now we turn to problems that arise in the practice of such interrogation.
Farber says that the response to coercion typically contains "... at least three important elements: debility, dependency, and dread." Prisoners "... have reduced viability, are helplessly dependent on their captors for the satisfaction of their many basic needs, and experience the emotional and motivational reactions of intense fear and anxiety.... Among the [American] POW's pressured by the Chinese Communists, the DDD syndrome in its full-blown form constituted a state of discomfort that was well-nigh intolerable." (11). If the debility-dependency-dread state is unduly prolonged, however, the arrestee may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to arouse him.
Oh, think of the poor interrogator! He or she may have caused such discomfort to the interrogatee that the latter becomes intractably unavailable, through unconsciousness, depression, apathy, or mental (dissociative) shutdown. This leads to another situation that lies at the heart of the usual practical objection to torture, i.e., that it doesn't lead to results. This is known as the validity problem in torture-induced confession, or the they'll-say-anything-to-make-this-shit-stop syndrome. As usual, the CIA has thought the whole thing out (from their point of view):
Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist. This pragmatic objection has somewhat the same validity for a counterintelligence interrogation as for any other. But there is one significant difference. Confession is a necessary prelude to the CI interrogation of a hitherto unresponsive or concealing source.
And the use of coercive techniques will rarely or never confuse an interrogatee so completely that he does not know whether his own confession is true or false. He does not need full mastery of all his powers of resistance and discrimination to know whether he is a spy or not. Only subjects who have reached a point where they are under delusions are likely to make false confessions that they believe.
Remember this, class, for you will be tested. Interrogation is not about confession. Confession is only the prelude to the entire experience of the torture/interrogation process!
Once a true confession is obtained, the classic cautions apply. The pressures are lifted, at least enough so that the subject can provide counterintelligence information as accurately as possible. In fact, the relief granted the subject at this time fits neatly into the interrogation plan. He is told that the changed treatment is a reward for truthfulness and an evidence that friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates.
The profound moral objection to applying duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage has been stated. Judging the validity of other ethical arguments about coercion exceeds the scope of this paper....
Novice interrogators may be tempted to seize upon the initial yielding triumphantly and to personalize the victory. Such a temptation must be rejected immediately. An interrogation is not a game played by two people, one to become the winner and the other the loser.
It is simply a method of obtaining correct and useful information. Therefore the interrogator should intensify the subject's desire to cease struggling by showing him how he can do so without seeming to abandon principle, self-protection, or other initial causes of resistance. If, instead of providing the right rationalization at the right time, the interrogator seizes gloatingly upon the subject's wavering, opposition will stiffen again.
Techniques of Coercion
The following are the principal coercive techniques of interrogation: arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, narcosis, and induced regression.
The CIA goes into some detail describing the best way to arrest someone, and the kinds of environment their detention should encompass. but I will have to refer you back to our main text for greater detail. Let's just keep to the bullet points.
- Deprivation of Sensory Stimuli
The chief effect of arrest and detention, and particularly of solitary confinement, is to deprive the subject of many or most of the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations to which he has grown accustomed....
"The symptoms most commonly produced by isolation are superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions." (26)
The apparent reason for these effects is that a person cut off from external stimuli turns his awareness inward, upon himself, and then projects the contents of his own unconscious outwards, so that he endows his faceless environment with his own attributes, fears, and forgotten memories....
The deprivation of stimuli induces regression by depriving the subject's mind of contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in upon itself. At the same time, the calculated provision of stimuli during interrogation tends to make the regressed subject view the interrogator as a father-figure. The result, normally, is a strengthening of the subject's tendencies toward compliance.
CIA interrogator as "father figure". Kind of blows your mind, doesn't it? But imagine you had been kept alone "in a cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc.", you might consider any bozo who came and talked to you after one to two months of that your greatest friend, mentor, or "father-figure".
The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain. The same principle holds for other fears: sustained long enough, a strong fear of anything vague or unknown induces regression, whereas the materialization of the fear, the infliction of some form of punishment, is likely to come as a relief....
Threats delivered coldly are more effective than those shouted in rage. It is especially important that a threat not be uttered in response to the interrogatee's own expressions of hostility. These, if ignored, can induce feelings of guilt, whereas retorts in kind relieve the subject's feelings.
I hope you are noticing a pattern here. There is the calculated derangement of environment and psychological adjustment, followed by a respite or relief, instigating, via regression, a tendency to talk and loosen moral, ethical, poltical inner controls. Threats of death, well...
The threat of death has often been found to be worse than useless. It "has the highest position in law as a defense, but in many interrogation situations it is a highly ineffective threat. Many prisoners, in fact, have refused to yield in the face of such threats who have subsequently been 'broken' by other procedures." (3)
The principal reason is that the ultimate threat is likely to induce sheer hopelessness if the interrogatee does not believe that it is a trick...
Once again, the threat of something, like physical debility (hunger, fatigue, etc.) is worse than the reality, from a psychological viewpoint.
For centuries interrogators have employed various methods of inducing physical weakness: prolonged constraint; prolonged exertion; extremes of heat, cold, or moisture; and deprivation or drastic reduction of food or sleep. Apparently the assumption is that lowering the source's physiological resistance will lower his psychological capacity for opposition....
Another objection to the deliberate inducing of debility is that prolonged exertion, loss of sleep, etc., themselves become patterns to which the subject adjusts through apathy. The interrogator should use his power over the resistant subject's physical environment to disrupt patterns of response, not to create them. Meals and sleep granted irregularly, in more than abundance or less than adequacy, the shifts occuring on no discernible time pattern, will normally disorient an interrogatee and sap his will to resist more effectively than a sustained deprivation leading to debility.
The infliction of intense pain is not to be desired. The torture victim often discerns this as an act of desperation by the interrogator, especially if it comes late in the interrogation. Also, the victim is liable to say anything to stop the pain, thereby weakening trust in what they reveal. But the CIA, combing psych literature, and the work of researchers paid by the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force, not to mention their own psychologists, discovered a fact about human nature that the new modern torture paradigm would incorporate:
It has been plausibly suggested that, whereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself. "In the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor (.... and he can frequently endure).
When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter.... As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so."
As always in class, we have gotten too ambitious for our own good. We are running out of time (or patience of the typical Internet blog reader). We will finish up with summaries of the other main types of coercion suggested by the CIA.
- Heightened Suggestibility and Hypnosis
A huge subject all of its own, the CIA was very interested in the use of hypnosis, and likely still are.
Hypnosis offers one advantage not inherent in other interrogation techniques or aids: the post-hypnotic suggestion. Under favorable circumstances it should be possible to administer a silent drug to a resistant source, persuade him as the drug takes effect that he is slipping into a hypnotic trance, place him under actual hypnosis as consciousness is returning, shift his frame of reference so that his reasons for resistance become reasons for cooperating, interrogate him, and conclude the session by implanting the suggestion that when he emerges from trance he will not remember anything about what has happened.
This sketchy outline of possible uses of hypnosis in the interrogation of resistant sources has no higher goal than to remind operational personnel that the technique may provide the answer to a problem not otherwise soluble. To repeat: hypnosis is distinctly not a do-it-yourself project. Therefore the interrogator, base, or center that is considering its use must anticipate the timing sufficiently not only to secure the obligatory headquarters permission but also to allow for an expert's travel time and briefing.
Just as the threat of pain may more effectively induce compliance than its infliction, so an interrogatee's mistaken belief that he has been drugged may make him a more useful interrogation subject than he would be under narcosis. Louis A. Gottschalk cites a group of studies as indicating "that 30 to 50 per cent of individuals are placebo reactors, that is, respond with symptomatic relief to taking an inert substance." (7)
In the interrogation situation, moreover, the effectiveness of a placebo may be enhanced because of its ability to placate the conscience. The subject's primary source of resistance to confession or divulgence may be pride, patriotism, personal loyalty to superiors, or fear of retribution if he is returned to their hands. Under such circumstances his natural desire to escape from stress by complying with the interrogator's wishes may become decisive if he is provided an acceptable rationalization for compliance. "I was drugged" is one of the best excuses.
Drugs are no more the answer to the interrogator's prayer than the polygraph, hypnosis, or other aids.... Nevertheless, drugs can be effective in overcoming resistance not dissolved by other techniques. As has already been noted, the so-called silent drug (a pharmacologically potent substance given to a person unaware of its administration) can make possible the induction of hypnotic trance in a previously unwilling subject.
The CIA closes its discussion of the techniques above with an examination of malingering illness or mental disorder to escape the interrogation situation (to not be tortured!). Only a small quote will suffice here.
Most persons who feign a mental or physical illness do not know enough about it to deceive the well-informed. Malcolm L. Meltzer says, "The detection of malingering depends to a great extent on the simulator's failure to understand adequately the characteristics of the role he is feigning.... Often he presents symptoms which are exceedingly rare, existing mainly in the fancy of the layman. One such symptom is the delusion of misidentification, characterized by the... belief that he is some powerful or historic personage. This symptom is very unusual in true psychosis, but is used by a number of simulators.
In Conclusion
This has been a long and no doubt arduous class assignment. I will not ask for any paper, no multiple-choice test, no essay. I only ask that you read it -- I suggest printing it out, because it will be easier to read for most people that way. Spread the word, transmit the links. You have been priviliged to read about torture at a level that few people get to examine.
Extra Credit
Go and read the new Army Field Manual's Appendix M, on special interrogation techniques, and see how many you can trace back to the Kubark manual discussed here. It will be an enlightening revelation at how the U.S. government protects its torture work at the highest levels.
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